The Number Games

This report suggests that the federal budget’s claims regarding who would benefit from doubling the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) annual contribution ceiling are erroneous. The analysis finds that the government's claims that raising the annual TFSA contribution ceiling from $5,500 to $10,000 would disproportionately benefit lower- and middle-income Canadians use misleading income groupings and excludes data to show a distributional impact that is directly opposite to the one it actually has. The report also recommends the creation of a new lifetime TFSA contribution cap of $150,000 and a new maximum TFSA asset cap of $300,000.